Automated voice response systems, particularly systems employing speech recognition, must frequently provide guidance to a user so that the user may properly format his or her inputs and repeat inputs that were not properly recognized by the system. In order to achieve user satisfaction, voice response systems must provide prompts to users that indicate the format and content of the inputs needed from a user, so that the user's inputs can be interpreted accurately. In addition, presentation of prompts by the systems must not be too time consuming for a user. The nature of voice response systems makes them particularly prone to consume too much of a user's time because much of the information presented by a system, particularly menu information, is presented in sequence. The information a user needs to hear may be preceded by other information of no interest to the user.
One approach to providing user menus that are not excessively burdensome is the use of contextual menus. Contextual prompting provides prompts that are based on the user's position in the application. For example, if a user is listening to voicemail, one set of prompts is provided. If a user is searching a directory in order to place a call, another set of prompts is provided. Such directed selection of prompts helps reduce the number of choices presented to the user, but typical present day systems do not sufficiently advantageously distinguish between users. For example, expert users may know all the different inputs that are required for each stage of an application, other users may be very experienced with some portions of the application but not with other portions, and relatively inexperienced users are likely to be unfamiliar with the inputs required for a system and need fairly extensive information, such as a relatively complete list of available input choices.
In typical prior art systems, however, little or no distinction is made between such users. Instead, because of the necessity that all users be provided with enough information to enable them to provide a correctly formatted input that will achieve the result they desire, all users are typically treated in the same manner. More experienced users, therefore, are forced to listen to much more extensive prompts than they need. Systems that provide extensive prompts to all users waste time and cause significant dissatisfaction among users that do not require elaborate prompts. Conversely, if a system employs shorter prompts, it may run the risk that the prompts will be insufficiently detailed for less expert users.
There exists, therefore, a need for automated voice response systems that are capable of determining the experience level of a user for various stages of an application and for providing prompts that take into account the particular user's level of experience or ability to successfully work with the stage of the application being used.